Your vote and how to use it

by Gertrude Foster Brown

For liberty is not yet complete. There may be as great a struggle ahead of the world as lies in the past. Before the tremendous upheaval of the war, we took it for granted that the liberties we possess were common, more or less, in most of the civilized world. Since then the horrors, the unbelievable human suffering, the suspension of all human rights, in the region of the great struggle, we have laid to the war, and have not realized that in many parts of civilized Europe, before the war, human freedom as we know it did not exist, and that the denial of certain rights which we claim as fundamental, was common.

At the foundation of our national existence has been that belief in the principles of liberty, justice, and opportunity which the Constitution expresses. The rights given us by the founders of our nation have been the ideals which other democratic governments have sought to follow. They have been sufficiently elastic to meet the growth of the world’s belief in democracy, and to provide for all new developments in the ideals of human liberty. If these ideals have been denied to any of our people, it has been the fault of us as citizens. The degree in which they are maintained depends on us. Instead of denying the liberties that we actually enjoy, would we not do better to advance them and add to them? In place of tearing down the great structure already erected, is it not wiser to help to correct its imperfections and to continue to build on it?

There is an intelligent part of the public that desires good government and will help to maintain our ideals of justice, but they are in the minority. There is also a part that sees in government only their own selfish profit, but they are also a minority. The great mass of people are indifferent until something arouses them. They would rather be left alone by bad government than be bothered by good government. That is the great problem of democracy—to arouse all the people to a realization of the necessity of their active interest in and support of that democracy, to increase their sense of individual responsibility; and that is the reason for universal suffrage—to put yeast into a people and to ferment their dormant interest. Democracy is not static. It exists only as it is upheld.

We hear about the denials of justice and the failures of democracy more than we do about its blessings. Our sense of perspective is often wrong. We talk about an act of lawlessness in the United States, even if it is being prosecuted with energy by the government, and class it with a deliberate attempt by a government to crush a people. We make no distinction between a State with deficient labor laws and a country where the laboring classes have no right to make themselves heard. We see no difference between a suppression of disloyal utterances in time of war and a people that is never allowed to speak freely, or a censoring of papers in war-time and a press that never prints anything but what it is told to print.

We are apt to magnify the evils of democracy at home, and to forget the magnificent heritage of liberty that belongs to us.

What are the special privileges which we enjoy?

First.—Personal Security, the right to live our daily lives without fear of personal danger, the right of being secure from unwarrantable seizure of person. This right has been ours so long that we do not know how precious a right it is. It is difficult even to conjure up in imagination an idea of what it would mean to be in daily fear of one’s safety.

Second.—Personal Liberty: Freedom of Thought and Speech. Life would be unthinkable to us without this liberty. To stifle one’s thought, to be afraid to let a suspicion of it leak out would mean to make life unbearable. Freedom of the Press is a right that we enjoy more than any other nation. Freedom of Worship has so long been unquestioned that we forget that it has been little more than a short century since it was established. Freedom of Assembly is a right which we accept without question.

The Right of Petition was won by a bitter struggle. We can scarcely imagine that there was ever a time when it was denied.

Third.—Equality before the Law is a right that is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, the right to a fair trial by jury, of habeas corpus, and due process of the law.